6 reasons you may not be cut out to be a web design or web development student

Every month, I get a couple of emails from people of very different backgrounds and ages that think about either starting a career in web design and development or that consider a career move towards coding and pixel pushing. I absolutely love getting back to those emails, because every single one of them is written by somebody who's truly passionate about getting involved in this sector.

Without exception, I encourage anyone who asks me whether or not they should pursue their dreams to do so as quickly as possible, especially when that dream involves debugging lines and lines of Javascript and CSS all day. Who doesn't dream of that right!? ;) Every school year I get to know about 60 new students in my classes.After five years of teaching, I start seeing patterns which help me recognize who's cut out to be a great web design student and who isn't.

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Of course, this article is just an opinion and in the end, you are the one that decides what you want to do and nobody else. By all means, listen to yourself and to nobody else. But if you think about starting in the web design or development field you may want to consider reading this post. Ready? Here we go.

#1. You arrive late in class

If you have a tendency to arrive late for class - and I'm not talking about that one time your iPhone alarm didn't go off - it shows that you are not serious about your studies. If you make a habit out of being late for school, do you think that you will arrive on time on a client's meeting once you start freelancing? Chances are slim.

#2. You copy work of others, just to meet the deadline

Ethics, it's what matters when you're in this profession for the long haul. Some students copy work of other students, just to get a grade and be done with it. As long as you don't get caught, you might be ok, but you'll never be a web designer I'd want to do business with. Even when a good web designer has the chance to copy work of a fellow student, they'll take too much pride in creating something their selves, even if that work is not up to par with what another student has made.

Web development is about growing and learning on your own and becoming better, step by step. Becoming a professional web designer or developer is something that takes a lot of time, but if you can show me that you can tackle one problem by yourself, I'm convinced that you can tackle many other problems down the road as well.

#3 - You lack motivation

Being motivated is not the same as behaving like a perfect student in school. What is important, is that you have chosen a field of study because that's what you want to do with your life, not because some of your friends decided to go study web design because you know, they're good at watching youtube video's or posting funny updates on Facebook. Before students come to our school, we have so called in-take interviews, where we talk to the student about why they want to come to our school and why they choose our field of study out of all the available options. If a student isn't passionate about web design already at this interview, you can be pretty sure they won't turn out to be great web designers or developers over time. Motivation to become better at your craft is the number one thing to becoming good at any profession. This is also true for becoming a web designer/developer.

#4 - Outside of school, you don't like working on web projects

When students have side projects, next to their busy schedule in school, it's a key sign that this student is passionate and passion leads to success without doubt. If you are passionate about doing something, I'm not saying you'll get rich, but you'll be definitely living like a king and not like a corporate slave that punches the clock every day. I need to refine that last phrase: you can of course live like a king in any large corporation working for a boss.

What I'm getting at is that you will need to have the balls to determine what makes you happy and go do that, whether it's working for a boss on some cool projects for large clients or to create your own web apps on a freelance basis. It's all good, as long as that's what you want to be doing forthy hours a week. Just the other week, one of my students showed me a mobile app framework he created in his spare time, similar to jQuery mobile (which is awesome by the way).

Those kinds of accomplishments show me that you're into web development because you love what you're doing, not because some teacher (that's me) tells you to do your homework.

#5 - Details are not for you

Going the extra mile. It's not simple to do more than what's expected of you, but once you overdeliver, even just a tiny bit, people are impressed with what you've come up with. It makes a difference to me and I'm sure many of my colleagues or fellow web designers will concur. In school, students often have to pitch and defend a project they've been working on. You can go with the default powerpoint theme and fonts, or you can create hand drawn slides to present your work. Those details make a big difference and they show that you care about your work. When one of my friends or acquaintances is looking to hire someone, I often get asked about students and their performance in my classes. Rest assured that it's easy to remember who went the extra mile and who didn't. Those things matter more than you think. I bet you didn't think that going to school was about marketing yourself, but to some extent it sure is.

#6 - You believe your training stops when you leave school

If you believe your training stops after your leave school at the end of the day, I suggest you go study something that doesn't evolve as quickly as web development. When you start a professional bachelor degree you'll be in school for at least three years. That means that when you graduate, some things you've learned in your first year in college or university will have evolved.

That's just how it works. If you think keeping up to date after you graduated or even during your studies is unnecessary, you're in for a surprise. Just keep an eye on the next generation of students graduating after you and see how long you'll last.

Conclusion

It all boils down to one thing: be passionate. If you want to become good at anything, make sure you're passionate. When you're passionate about something, you'll be motivated enough to adapt a certain work ethic, to stay up to date with the latest developments in your area of expertise and to even go the extra mile. If you have made your way through this article and you're still here, I'm pretty confident you have what it takes to become good at web development.

You've taken the time to read through this article, something you wouldn't have done if you didn't care in the first place. Now that you've come this far, why not care some more and share this article? Share your thoughts in the comments, I'd love to hear them!